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SCIRP is committed to maintaining high standards through a rigorous peer-review together with strict ethical policies. Any infringements of professional ethical codes, such as plagiarism, fraudulent use of data, bogus claims of authorship, should be taken very seriously by the editors with zero tolerance.

Submission

Manuscripts should be submitted by one of the authors. Submissions by anyone other than one of the authors will not be accepted. The submitted paper, or any translation of it, must neither be published, nor be submitted for publication elsewhere. Violations of these rules will normally result in an immediate rejection of the submission without further review.

When a new submission is received, a couple of checks will be done at the publisher's office:

Initial check of format and completeness

Initial check for the publication status

Initial check of author's background

Initial check for Plagiarism

Check for machine produced manuscript

Plagiarism

Papers submitted to SCIRP must contain original material. An Initial Plagiarism Check is carried out for every manuscript submitted to SCIRP. The check starts with a Google search which is built into SCIRP's Paper Submission and Manuscript Tracking System.

SCIRP is a member of CrossCheck and has added all its papers to the CrossCheck database. In this way, also other publishers can compare their manuscripts with SCIRP's papers. CrossCheck is used through the web-based iThenticate system by uploading a document and running a similarity check against the CrossCheck database and the Internet. The check provides a "Similarity Index" which is the percentage of the manuscript matching other sources. iThenticate does not determine whether a manuscript contains plagiarism. Therefore, manuscripts with a high "Similarity Index" are examined if the other matching sources have been properly cited.

Data Fabrication and Falsification

Data Fabrication concerns the making up of research findings. Data Falsification means manipulating research data with the intention of giving a false impression. This includes manipulating images (e.g. micrographs, gels, radiological images), removing outliers or “inconvenient” results, changing, adding or omitting data points, etc. Generally, if an author’s figures are questionable, it is suggested to request the original data from the authors.

Conflicts of Interest

Authors

Authors should be aware of a possible Conflict of Interest. In such a case authors can still take responsibility for the accuracy of their paper, but must inform the reader with an appropriate statement in the Acknowledgements.

Conflicts include the following:

Financial—funding and other payments, goods and services received or expected by the authors relating to the subject of the work or from an organization with an interest in the outcome of the work

Affiliations—being employed by, on the advisory board for, or a member of an organization with an interest in the outcome of the work

Intellectual property—patents or trademarks owned by someone or their organization

Personal—friends, family, relationships, and other close personal connections

Ideology—beliefs or activism, for example, political or religious, relevant to the work

Academic—competitors or someone whose work is critiqued

Declared conflicts of interest will be considered by the editor and reviewers and included in the published article.

Peer-Reviewers

Reviewers should be asked at the time they are asked to critique a manuscript if they have conflicts of interest that could complicate their review. Reviewers must disclose to editors any conflicts of interest that could bias their opinions of the manuscript, and should recuse themselves from reviewing specific manuscripts if the potential for bias exists. Reviewers must not use knowledge of the work they’re reviewing before its publication to further their own interests.

Editors and Journal Staff

Editors who make final decisions about manuscripts should recuse themselves from editorial decisions if they have conflicts of interest or relationships that pose potential conflicts related to articles under consideration. Other editorial staff members who participate in editorial decisions must provide editors with a current description of their financial interests or other conflicts (as they might relate to editorial judgments) and recuse themselves from any decisions in which a conflict of interest exists. Editorial staff must not use information gained through working with manuscripts for private gain. Editors should publish regular disclosure statements about potential conflicts of interests related to their own commitments and those of their journal staff. Guest editors should follow these same procedures.